Apple hopes to take bite of 3G mobile phone market

Technofile: It's time once again for a round up of the latest news in the technology world, writes Mike Butcher

Mac fans take note. Not only are there rumours circulating about a new video iPod, due to come out by the summer, but Apple is also believed to be developing a mobile phone.

Analysts in the US are abuzz with rumours that Apple is planning to replace its existing high-end iPod, which plays video, with a new version that would mean one side covered by the screen.

The touchscreen version would then be able to play widescreen video and come with Bluetooth headphones, if the rumour-mongers are correct.

There is clearly some truth in the speculation: Apple has already filed patents depicting the use of a wireless iPod.

Meanwhile, in the US, analyst Visiongain is predicting that Apple will launch a mobile-media-playing mobile phone that can handle 3G and make calls over the internet. If true, the service would run on the new virtual network operator called Helio which is aimed at the young, high-spending, iPod-wearing crowd.

Apple teamed up with Motorola last year to offer the Rokr phone, which turned out to be disappointing and could only play a small number of tracks.

Speaking of iPods, are you running out of batteries? Get the iLuv i604 iPod battery booster, extending playtime by up to 55 hours. It costs around $85/€70.

Meanwhile, more possible competition for Apple in the form of Sony's plans to launch a redesigned set of Network Walkman E-series digital music players, designed to go up against Apple's Shuffle player.

Capacity could be up to 2GB, but it remains the case that until a hardware maker comes up with software to rival the excellent iTunes which makes music library organising a doddle, they are all whistling in the wind.

In other gadget news, Sanyo has launched a new digital camera and camcorder, the Xacti C6, one of the world's smallest, thinnest and lightest models.

It achieves this by recording everything straight to SD cards. It's small enough to fit in your shirt pocket and features a two-inch LCD monitor, 6MP CCD, 5x optical zoom, 12x digital zoom and digital image stabiliser.

You can shoot in high-resolution MPEG-4 for DVD-quality recording. A 1GB SD card should be able to last for an hour of video. There is no price as yet.

HP's latest PDA/smartphone is very Blackberry like, with a Qwerty keyboard. The hw6900 launches soon, and features an external memory slot, 1.3 megapixel digital camera, a GPS receiver to keep you on track and offers just about every connection standard there is - quad-band; GSM; GPRS; EDGE; WiFi; Bluetooth; infrared; USB, and a Mini-SD card slot. There is no 3G however, which is a shame but not a dead loss. It also features the latest Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 OS and a push e-mail service.

E-mail addicts and Blackberry devotees will be excited to hear Research in Motion plans shortly to introduce a 3G version of the BlackBerry to Europe, the 8707v. For those that want their mobile e-mail just that little bit faster...